Unfinished Business: Effective UK Anti-Money Laundering Supervision

4 Sep 2026 11:43 AM

The UK is overhauling how it oversees the legal and accountancy sectors for anti-money laundering, but making the new system work is the real test.

As UK Parliament returns after a long hot summer, and with Burnham’s administration firmly in government, one long-awaited reform is making its way into primary legislation: anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) supervision. Reforming the UK’s regime for overseeing legal, accountancy and trust and company service providers (TCSPs) for AML/CTF purposes is one of the most significant pieces of unfinished business from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s 2018 evaluation of the UK – and the child of not one but two UK Economic Crime Plans that spanned seven long years.

Now in 2026 – and a very different world to 2018 – the UK is the President of FATF on the global stage and has made risk-based supervision a priority. Meanwhile at home, the government is promising good growth, publishing a new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery (AMLAR) Strategy which prioritises more effective AML supervision, preparing to release another Economic Crime Plan after the October 2026 budget and, again, showing FATF how it is all going. There is a lot to do, but the case for persevering with bringing roughly 60,000 legal, accountancy and TCSP firms under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s supervision for AML purposes is strong. These professional services firms are ‘gatekeepers’ to the financial system and the new regime promises to be more consistent and better equipped to keep dirty money out.

Click here for the full press release